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PHILLIPS 
THE  LOST  ARTS 


j  California 

jegional 

iacility 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS' S   WRITINGS. 


SPEECHES,   LECTURES,   AND   LETTERS 

By    WENDELL    PHILLIPS. 

COMPILED,  UNDER  DIRECTION  OF  THE  GREAT  ORATOR, 
BY  JAMES   REDPATH. 

CONTENTS. 

The  Murder  of  Lovejoy.  'Harper's  Ferry. 

Woman's  Rights.  Burial  of  John  Brown. 

Public  Opinion.  Lincoln's  Election. 

Surrender  of  Sims.  Mobs  and  Education. 

Sims  Anniversary.  Disunion. 

Philosophy  of  the  Abolition  Move-  Progress. 

ment.  Under  the  Flag. 

Removal  of  Judge  Loring.  The  War  for  the  Union. 

The  Boston  Mob.  The  Cabinet. 

The  Pilgrims.  Letter  to  the  Tribune. 

Letter  to  Judge  Shaw  and  President  Toussaint  L'Ouverture. 

Walker.  Metropolitan  Police. 

Idols.  The  State  of  the  Country. 

This  volume  contains  the  most  prominent  speeches  of  his  anti-slavery  career,  together 
with  many  later  efforts;  thus  presenting  varied  specimens  of  his  matchless  eloquence. 

PUBLISHED   IN   TWO   STYLES. 

Library  edition.     Cloth.    Tinted  paper $2.50 

And,  for  general  distribution,  a  popular  edition.     Paper  covers,      .50 

Cloth,  51.50. 


LIFE  AND  TIMES   OF  WENDELL  PHILLIPS. 

By   GEORGE  L.   AUSTIN,   with   steel   portrait   and    illustrations. 
I2mo,  cloth,  $1.50. 

PHILLIPS  MEMORIALS. 

Uniform  type,  size,  and  covers,  8vo,  paper,  25  cents  each,  comprising 

Wendell  Phillips. — A  Biographical  Essay.  By  THOMAS  WENTWORTH 
HIGGINSON. 

Eulogy  of  Garrison. — Remarks  of  WENDELL  PHILLIPS  at  the  funeral 
of  William  Lloyd  Garrison. 

The  Lost  Arts. — The  Celebrated  Lyceum  Lecture  by  WENDELL 
PHILLIPS. 

Daniel  O'Connell. — The  Irish  Patriot.  Lecture  by  WENDELL 
PHILLIPS. 

The  Scholar  in  the  Republic. — Address  at  the  Centennial  Anniver- 
sary of  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  of  Harvard  College,  June  30,  iSSi. 

Others  in  preparation.  

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THE   COMPLETE   WORKS 


CHARLES    SUMNER. 

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THESE  volumes  comprise  a  full  and  concise  compendium  of  the  great  questions  which 
occupied  the  public  mind,  and  were  discussed  by  Mr.  Sumner  with  marked  force  and  abil- 
ity, from  1845  to  1874,  a  period  of  nearly  thirty  years,  covering,  if  not  the  most  important, 
at  least  the  most  momentous,  epoch  of  American  history.  The  same  careful  study,  fore- 
sight, and  conscientious  sense  of  accuracy,  which  he  expended  in  the  original  preparation 
of  his  papers,  were  bestowed  by  Mr.  Sumner  upon  the  preparation  of  these  volumes.  The 
entire  contents  were  made  up  under  his  direct  personal  supervision,  and  were  subjected  to 
the  rich  maturity  of  his  marvellous  powers.  The  later  volumes,  while  passing  through  the 
press,  have  had  the  careful  oversight  of  Professor  Longfellow,  the  Hon.  Edward  L.  Pierce, 
and  Francis  V.  Balch,  Esq.,  the  life-long  friends  and  literary  executors  of  Mr.  Sumner. 

The  original  prospectus  was  issued  when  the  distinguished  orator  and  statesman  was  in 
the  midst  of  his  honorable  career,  and  had  apparently  before  him  all  the  evening  of  his  life, 
for  the  revision  of  his  orations,  speeches,  and  addresses.  Notwithstanding  his  impaired 
health,  he  had  labored  with  assiduity  to  arrange  and  perfect  them;  and  before  his  death 
nine  volumes  had  been  published,  and  the  tenth  was  given  to  the  printers. 

In  announcing  the  completion  of  this  monument  to  the  beloved  statesman,  the  publish- 
ers desire  once  more  to  appeal  to  the  generous  cc-operation  of  all  the  true  men  and  women 
who  lent  their  aid  to  the  publication  of  these  volumes. 

As  only  a  limited  edition  is  printed,  and  of  this  copies  are  furnished  only  to  subscribers 
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plete sets  cannot  long  continue  to  exist.  It  is  confidently  believed  that  no  person  would 
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must  rapidly  increase  as  time  moves  on,  —  and  that  a  careful  inspection  of  the  later 
volumes,  in  connection  with  the  full  topical  and  analytical  index,  cannot  fail  to  make  clear 
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LEE  AND  SHEPARD,  Publishers,  Boston. 


PREFACE  TO  "THE  LOST  ARTS." 


IX  1830  the  lyceum  lecture-system,  which  has  played  so 
important  and  conspicuous  a  part  in  the  political  and 
intellectual  education  of  the  masses,  was  started  by  Horace 
Mann,  Josiah  Holbrook,  Rev.  Dr.  Allen,  Hon.  Amasa 
Walker,  George  B.  Emerson,  and  others.  Mr.  Phillips  was 
one  of  the  first  to  take  part  in  the  movement ;  and,  as  early 
as  1836,  he  delivered  his  first  lecture.  His  subjects  were 
almost  invariably  chosen  from  the  realm  of  natural  science, 
of  which  he  was  always  more  fond  than  of  the  law ;  and 
every  succeeding  winter  his  name  appears  as  one  of  the 
lecturers  in  the  stated  courses  of  the  day. 

The  lecture  on  "The  Lost  Arts,"  which  has  been  conceded 
to  be  the  most  popular  and  the  most  charming  lecture  for  the 
people  ever  delivered  from  an  American  platform,  began  its 
career  in  the  winter  of  1838-39.  Previous  to  this  time  Mr. 
Phillips  had  spoken  chiefly  on  themes  pertaining  to  chem- 
istry and  natural  physics,  and  occasionally  on  some  of  the 
discoveries  and  inventions  in  the  field  of  mechanics.  Being 
called  upon  rather  suddenly  to  speak  before  a  certain  audi- 
ence, it  occurred  to  him  that  a  familiar  r6sum6  of  curious 
knowledge  about  the  arts,  which  the  ancients  knew,  and 
which  we  can  neither  rival  nor  revive,  might  possibly  prove 
''.'iitertaining.  Although  hastily  outlined  in  a  series  of  notes, 


4  PREFACE. 

it  made  an  immense  hit.  It  was  almost  an  impromptu 
delivery :  at  the  time,  it  was  not  committed  to  writing,  and, 
indeed,  was  never  written  out  by  Mr.  Phillips  during  his  life- 
time. What  is  even  more  strange,  "The  Lost  Arts"  was 
rarely,  if  ever,  delivered  twice  alike,  although  delivered 
nearly  two  thousand  times. 

About  twenty  years  ago  Mr.  Phillips  was  engaged  to 
deliver  the  lecture  in  the  "  Eedpath  Lyceum."  A  stenog- 
rapher was  employed  to  make  a  verbatim  report :  it  was 
carefully  written  out  in  full,  was  elegantly  bound,  and  then 
presented  to  its  author.  Mr.  Phillips  expressed  himself 
exceedingly  grateful  to  his  friends,  but  was  much  overcome 
by  the  reply,  — 

"We  have  not  done  it  for  your  sake,  Mr.  Phillips,  but 
for  posterity." 


THE    LOST   ARTS. 


LADIES  AXD  GENTLEMEN  : 

I  AM  to  talk  to  you  to-niglit  about  "  The  Lost  Arts," 
—  a  lecture  which  has  grown  under  my  hand  year 
after  year,  and  which  belongs  to  that  first  phase  of  the 
lyceum  system,  before  it  undertook  to  meddle  with  politi- 
cal duties  or  dangerous  and  angry  questions  of  ethics ; 
when  it  was  merely  an  academic  institution,  trying  to 
win  busy  men  back  to  books,  teaching  a  little  science, 
or  repeating  some  tale  of  foreign  travel,  or  painting 
some  great  representative  character,  the  symbol  of  his 
age.  I  think  I  can  claim  a  purpose  beyond  a  moment's 
amusement  in  this  glance  at  early  civilization. 

I,  perhaps,  might  venture  to  claim  that  it  was  a 
medicine  for  what  is  the  most  objectionable  feature  of 
our  national  character;  and  that  is  self-conceit,  —  an  un- 
due appreciation  of  ourselves,  an  exaggerated  estimate 
of  our  achievements,  of  our  inventions,  of  our  contribu- 
tions to  popular  comfort,  and  of  our  place,  in  fact,  in 
the  great  procession  of  the  ages,  ^e  seem  to  imagine, 
that  whether  knowledge  will  die  with  us,  or  not,  it 
certainly  began  with  us.  We  have  a  pitying  estimate, 
a  tender  pity,  for  the  narrowness,  ignorance,  and  dark- 
ness of  the  bygone  ages.  We  seem  to  ourselves  not 
only  to  monopolize,  but  to  have  begun,  the  era  of  light. 
In  other  words,  we  are  all  running  over  with  a  fourth- 


6  THE    LOST    AETS. 

day-of-July  spirit  of  self-content.  I  am  often  reminded 
of  the  German  whom  the  English  poet  Coleridge  met 
at  Frankfort.  He  always  took  off  his  hat  with  pro- 
found respect  when  he  ventured  to  speak  of  himself. 
It  seems  to  me,  the  American  people  might  be  painted 
in  the  chronic  attitude  of  taking  off  its  hat  to  itself; 
and  therefore  it  can  be  no  waste  of  time,  with  an  audi- 
ence in  such  a  mood,  to  take  their  eyes  for  a  moment 
from  the  present  civilization,  and  guide  them  back  to 
that  earliest  possible  era  that  history  describes  for  us, 
if  it  were  only  for  the  purpose  of  asking  whether  we 
boast  on  the  right  line.  I  might  despair  of  curing  us 
of  the  habit  of  boasting,  but  I  might  direct  it  better  I 

Well,  I  have  been  somewhat  criticised,  year  after 
year,  for  this  endeavor  to  open  up  the  claims  of  old 
times.  I  have  been  charged  with  repeating  useless 
fables  with  no  foundation.  To-day  I  take  the  mere 
subject  of  glass.  This  material,  Pliny  says,  was  discov- 
ered by  accident.  Some  sailors,  landing  on  the  eastern 
coast  of  Spain,  took  their  cooking-utensils,  and  sup- 
ported them  on  the  sand  by  the  stones  that  they  found 
in  the  neighborhood:  they  kindled  their  fire,  cooked 
the  fish,  finished  the  meal,  and  removed  the  apparatus; 
and  glass  was  found  to  have  resulted  from  the  nitre  and 
sea-sand,  vitrified  by  the  heat.  Well,  I  have  been  a 
dozen  times  criticised  by  a  number  of  wise  men,  in 
newspapers,  who  have  said  that  this  was  a  very  idle 
tale,  that  there  never  was  sufficient  heat  in  a  few  bun- 
bles  of  sticks  to  produce  vitrification, — glass-making. 
I  happened,  two  years  ago,  to  meet,  on  the  prairies  of 
Missouri,  Professor  Shepherd,  who  started  from  Yale 
College,  and,  like  a  genuine  Yankee,  brings  up  any- 
where where  there  is  any  thing  to  do.  I  happened  to 
mention  this  criticism  to  him.  "Well,"  says  he,  ua 
little  practical  life  would  have  freed  men  from  that 


THE   LOST   ARTS.  7 

doubt."  Said  he,  "  We  stopped  last  year  in  Mexico,  to 
cook  some  venison.  We  got  down  from  our  saddles, 
and  put  the  cooking-apparatus  on  stones  we  found 
there  ;  made  our  fire  with  the  wood  we  got  there,  re- 
sembling ebony ;  and  when  we  removed  the  apparatus 
there  was  pure  silver  gotten  out  of  the  embers  by  the 
intense  heat  of  that  almost  iron  wood.  Now,"  said  he, 
"  that  heat  was  greater  than  any  necessary  to  vitrify  the 
materials  of  glass."  Why  not  suppose  that  Pliny's 
sailors  had  lighted  on  some  exceedingly  hard  wood? 
May  it  not  be  as  possible  as  in  this  case  ? 

So,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  with  a  growing  habit  of 
distrust  of  a  large  share  of  this- modern  and  exceedingly 
scientific  criticism  of  ancient  records,  I  think  we  have 
been  betraying  our  own  ignorance,  and  that  frequently, 
when  the  statement  does  not  look,  on  the  face  of  it,  to 
be  exactly  accurate,  a  little  investigation  below  the  sur- 
face will  show  that  it  rests  on  a  real  truth.  Take,  for 
instance,  the  English  proverb,  which  was  often  quoted 
in  my  college  days.  We  used  to  think  how  little  logic 
the  common  people  had ;  and  when  we  wanted  to  illus- 
trate this  in  the  schoolroom,  —  it  was  what  was  called  a 
non  sequitur:  the  effect  did  not  come  from  the  cause 
named,  —  we  always  quoted  the  English  proverb,  "  Ten- 
terden  steeple  is  the  cause  of  Goodwin  Sands."  We 
said,  "  How  ignorant  a  population  !  "  But,  when  we 
went  deeper  into  the  history,  we  found  that  the  proverb 
was  not  meant  for  logic,  but  was  meant  for  sarcasm. 
One  of  the  bishops  had  fifty  thousand  pounds  given  to 
him,  to  build  a  breakwater  to  save  the  Goodwin  Sands 
from  the  advancing  sea ;  but  the  good  bishop,  —  being 
one  of  the  kind  of  bishops  which  Mr.  Froude  describes 
in  his  lecture,  that  the  world  would  be  better  if  Provi- 
dence would  remove  them  from  it, — instead  of  build- 
ing the  breakwater  to  keep  out  the  sea,  simply  built  a 


8  THE   LOST   AETS. 

steeple ;  and  this  proverb  was  sarcastic,  and  not  logical, 
that  "  Tenterden  steeple  was  the  cause  of  the  Goodwin 
Sands."  When  you  contemplate  the  motive,  there  was 
the  closest  and  best-welded  logic  in  the  proverb.  So 
I  think  a  large  share  of  our  criticism  of  old  legends 
and  old  statements  will  be  found  in  the  end  to  be  the 
ignorance  that  overleaps  its  own  saddle,  and  falls  on 
the  other  side. 

Well,  my  first  illustration  ought  to  be  this  material, 
glass :  but,  before  I  proceed  to  talk  of  these  lost  arts, 
I  ought  in  fairness  to  make  an  exception ;  and  it  is  the 
conception  and  conceit  which  lies  here.  Over  a  very 
large  section  of  literature,  there  is  a  singular  contradic- 
tion to  this  swelling  conceit.  There  are  certain  lines 
in  which  the  moderns  are  ill  satisfied  with  themselves, 
and  contented  to  acknowledge  that  they  ought  fairly  to 
sit  down  at  the  feet  of  their  predecessors.  Take  poetry, 
painting,  sculpture,  architecture,  the  drama,  and  almost 
every  thing  in  works  of  any  form  that  relates  to  beauty, 
—  with  regard  to  that  whole  sweep,  the  modern  world 
gilds  it  with  its  admiration  of  the  beautiful.  Take  the 
very  phrases  that  we  use.  The  artist  says  he  wishes  to 
go  to  Rome.  "  For  what  ?  "  —  "  To  study  the  masters." 
Well,  all  the  masters  have  been  in  their  graves  several 
hundred  years.  We  are  all  pupils.  You  tell  the  poet, 
"  Sir,  that  line  of  yours  would  remind  one  of  Homer," 
and  he  is  crazy.  Stand  in  front  of  a  painting,  in  the 
hearing  of  the  artist,  and  compare  its  coloring  to  that 
of  Titian  or  Raphael,  and  he  remembers  you  forever. 
I  remember  once  standing  in  front  of  a  bit  of  marble 
carved  by  Powers,  a  Vermonter,  who  had  a  matchless, 
instinctive  love  of  art,  and  perception  of  beauty.  I  said 
to  an  Italian  standing  with  me,  "  Well,  now,  that  seems 
to  me  to  be  perfection."  The  answer  was,  "  To  be 
perfection,"  —  shrugging  his  shoulders,  —  "  why,  sir, 


THE   LOST   ARTS. 

that  reminds  you  of  Phidias ! "  as  if  to  remind  you 
of  that  Greek  was  a  greater  compliment  than  to  be 
perfection. 

Well,  now  the  very  choice  of  phrases  betrays  a  con- 
fession of  inferiority,  and  you  see  it  again  creeps  out  in 
the  amount  we  borrow.  Take  the  whole  range  of  im- 
aginative literature,  and  we  are  all  wholesale  borrowers. 
In  every  matter  that  relates  to  invention,  to  use,  or 
beauty,  or  form,  we  are  borrowers. 

You  may  glance  around  the  furniture  of  the  palaces 
in  Europe,  and  you  may  gather  all  these  utensils  of  art 
or  use  ;  and,  when  you  have  fixed  the  shape  and  forms 
in  your  mind,  I  will  take  you  into  the  museum  of 
Naples,  which  gathers  all  remains  of  the  domestic  life 
of  the  Romans,  and  you  shall  not  find  a  single  one  of 
these  modern  forms  of  art  or  beauty  or  use,  that  was 
not  anticipated  there.  We  have  hardly  added  one 
single  line  or  sweep  of  beauty  to  the  antique. 

Take  the  stories  of  Shakspeare,  who  has,  perhaps, 
written  his  forty-odd  plays.  Some  are  historical.  The 
rest,  two-thirds  of  them,  he  did  not  stop  to  invent,  but 
he  found  them.  These  he  clutched,  ready  made  to  his 
hand,  from  the  Italian  novelists,  who  had  taken  them 
before  from  the  East.  Cinderella  and  her  slipper  is 
older  than  all  history,  like  half  a  dozen  other  baby 
legends.  The  annals  of  the  world  do  not  go  back  far 
enough  to  tell  us  from  where  they  first  came. 

All  the  boys'  plays,  like  every  thing  that  amuses  the 
child  in  the  open  air,  are  Asiatic.  Rawlinson  will  show 
you  that  they  came  somewhere  from  the  banks  of  the 
Ganges  or  the  suburbs  of  Damascus.  Bulwer  bor- 
rowed the  incidents  of  his  Roman  stories  from  legends 
of  a  thousand  years  before.  Indeed,  Dunlop,  who  has 
grouped  the  history  of  the  novels  of  all  Europe  into 
one  essay,  says  that  in  the  nations  of  modern  Europe 


10  THE  LOST   ARTS. 

there  have  been  two  hundred  and  fifty  or  three  hundred 
distinct  stories.  He  says  at  least  two  hundred  of  these 
may  be  traced,  before  Christianity,  to  the  other  side  of 
the  Black  Sea.  If  this  were  my  topic,  which  it  is  not,  I 
might  tell  you  that  even  our  newspaper-jokes  are  enjoy- 
ing a  very  respectable  old  age.  Take  Maria  Edgeworth's 
essay  on  Irish  bulls  and  the  laughable  mistakes  of  the 
Irish.  Even  the  tale  which  either  Maria  Edge  worth  or 
her  father  thought  the  best  is  that  famous  story  of  a 
man  writing  a  letter  as  follows:  "My  dear  friend,  I 
would  write  you  in  detail,  more  minutely,  if  there  was 
not  an  impudent  fellow  looking  over  my  shoulder,  read- 
ing every  word."  ("  No,  you  lie :  I've  not  read  a  word 
you  have  written  ! ")  This  is  an  Irish  bull,  still  it  is  a 
very  old  one.  It  is  only  two  hundred  and  fifty  years 
older  than  the  New  Testament.  Horace  Walpole  dis- 
sented from  Richard  Lovell  Edgeworth,  and  thought  the 
other  Irish  bull  was  the  best,  —  of  the  man  who  said,  "  I 
would  have  been  a  very  handsome  man,  but  they  changed 
me  in  the  cradle."  That  comes  from  Don  Quixote,  and 
is  Spanish;  but  Cervantes  borrowed  it  from  the  Greek 
in  the  fourth  century,  and  the  Greek  stole  it  from  the 
Egyptian  hundreds  of  }*ears  back. 

There  is  one  story  which  it  is  said  Washington  has 
related,  of  a  man  who  went  into  an  inn,  and  asked  for  a 
glass  of  drink  from  the  landlord,  who  pushed  forward 
a  wineglass  about  half  the  usual  size ;  the  tea-cups  also 
in  that  day  were  not  more  than  half  the  present  size. 
The  landlord  said,  "That  glass  out  of  which  you  are 
drinking  is  forty  years  old."  —  "Wtll,"  said  the  thirsty 
traveller,  contemplating  its  diminutive  proportions,  "  I 
think  it  is  the  smallest  thing  of  its  age  I  ever  saw." 
That  story  as  told  is  given  as  a  story  of  Athens  three 
hundred  and  seventy-five  years  before  Christ  was  born. 
Why !  all  these  Irish  bulls  are  Greek,  —  every  one  of 


THE   LOST   ARTS.  11 

them.  Take  the  Irishman  who  carried  around  a  brick 
as  a  specimen  of  the  house  he  had  to  sell ;  take  the  Irish- 
man who  shut  his  eyes,  and  looked  into  the  glass  to  see 
how  he  would  look  when  he  was  dead ;  take  the  Irish- 
man that  bought  a  crow,  alleging  that  crows  were  report- 
ed to  live  two  hundred  years,  and  he  meant  to  set  out 
and  try  it ;  take  the  Irishman  who  met  a  friend  who 
said  to  him,  "  Why,  sir,  I  heard  you  were  dead."  — 
"  Well,"  says  the  man,  "  I  suppose  you  see  I'm  not."  — 
"  Oh,  no ! "  says  he,  "  I  would  believe  the  man  who  told 
me  a  good  deal  quicker  than  I  would  you."  Well,  those 
are  all  Greek.  A  score  or  more  of  them,  of  the  parallel 
character,  come  from  Athens. 

Our  old  Boston  patriots  felt  that  tarring  and  feather- 
ing a  Tory  was  a  genuine  patent  Yankee  fire-brand, — 
Yankeeism.  They  little  imagined  that  when  Richard 
Cceur  de  Lion  set  out  on  one  of  his  crusades,  among 
the  orders  he  issued  to  his  camp  of  soldiers  was,  that 
any  one  who  robbed  a  hen-roost  should  be  tarred  and 
feathered.  Many  a  man  who  lived  in  Connecticut  has 
repeated  the  story  of  taking  children  to  the  limits  of 
the  town,  and  giving  them  a  sound  thrashing  to  enforce 
their  memory  of  the  spot.  But  the  Burgundians  in 
France,  in  a  law  now  eleven  hundred  years  old,  attrib- 
uted valor  to  the  East  of  France  because  it  had  a  law 
that  the  children  should  be  taken  to  the  limits  of  the 
district,  and  there  soundly  whipped,  in  order  that  they 
might  forever  remember  where  the  limits  came. 

So  we  have  very  few  new  things  in  that  line.  But  I 
said  I  would  take  the  subject,  for  instance,  of  this  very 
material  —  very  substance  —  glass.  It  is  the  very  best 
expression  of  man's  self-conceit. 

I  had  heard  that  nothing  had  been  observed  in  ancient 
times  which  could  be  called  by  the  name  of  glass, — 
that  there  had  been  merely  attempts  to  imitate  it.  I 


12  THE   LOST   ARTS. 

thought  they  had  proved  the  proposition  :  they  certainly 
had  elaborated  it.  In  Pompeii,  a  dozen  miles  south  of 
Naples,  which  was  covered  with  ashes  by  Vesuvius  eigh- 
teen hundred  years  ago,  they  broke  into  a  room  full  of 
glass :  there  was  ground-glass,  window-glass,  cut-glass, 
and  colored  glass  of  every  variety.  It  was  undoubtedly 
a  glass-maker's  factory.  So  the  lie  and  the  refutation 
came  face  to  face.  It  was  like  a  pamphlet  printed  in 
London,  in  1836,  by  Dr.  Lardner,  which  proved  that  a 
steamboat  could  not  cross  the  ocean ;  and  the  book  came 
to  this  country  in  the  first  steamboat  that  came  across 
the  Atlantic. 

The  chemistry  of  the  most  ancient  period  had  reached 
a  point  which  we  have  never  even  approached,  and  which 
we  in  vain  struggle  to  reach  to-day.  Indeed,  the  whole 
management  of  the  effect  of  light  on  glass  is  still  a 
matter  of  profound  study.  The  first  two  stories  which 
I  have  to*  offer  you  are  simply  stories  from  history. 

The  first  is  from  the  letters  of  the  Catholic  priests 
who  broke  into  China,  which  were  published  in  France 
some  two  hundred  years  ago.  They  were  shown  a  glass, 
transparent  and  colorless,  which  was  filled  with  a  liquor 
made  by  the  Chinese,  that  was  shown  to  the  observers, 
and  appeared  to  be  colorless  like  water.  This  liquor 
was  poured  into  the  glass,  and  then,  looking  through  it, 
it  seemed  to  be  filled  with  fishes.  They  turned  this  out, 
and  repeated  the  experiment,  and  again  it  was  filled 
with  fish.  The  Chinese  confessed  that  they  did  not 
make  them  ;  that  they  were  the  plunder  of  some  foreign 
conquest.  This  is  not  a  singular  thing  in  Chinese  his- 
tory; for  in  some  of  their  scientific  discoveries  we  have 
found  evidence  that  they  did  not  make  them,  but  stole 
them. 

The  second  story,  of  half  a  dozen,  certainly  five,  re- 
lates to  the  age  of  Tiberius,  the  time  of  St.  Paul;  and 


THE  LOST   ARTS.  13 

tells  of  a  Roman  who  had  been  banished,  and  who  re- 
turned to  Rome,  bringing  a  wonderful  cup.  This  cup  he 
dashed  upon  the  marble  pavement,  and  it  was  crushed, 
not  broken,  by  the  fall.  It  was  dented  some,  and  with 
a  hammer  he  easily  brought  it  into  shape  again.  It  was 
brilliant,  transparent,  but  not  brittle.  I  had  a  wine- 
glass when  I  made  this  talk  in  New  Haven ;  and  among 
the  audience  was  the  owner,  Professor  Silliman.  He 
was  kind  enough  to  come  to  the  platform  when  I  had 
ended,  and  say  that  he  was  familiar  with  most  of  my 
facts,  }jut,  speaking  of  malleable  glass,  he  had  this  to 
say,  —  that  it  was  nearly  a  natural  impossibility,  and 
that  no  amount  of  evidence  which  could  be  brought 
would  make  him  credit  it.  Well,  the  Romans  got  their 
chemistry  from  the  Arabians ;  they  brought  it  into  Spain 
eight  centuries  ago,  and  in  their  books  of  that  age  they 
claim  that  they  got  from  the  Arabians  malleable  glass. 
There  is  a  kind  of  glass  spoken  of  there,  that,  if  sup- 
ported by  one  end,  by  its  own  weight  in  twenty  hours 
would  dwindle  down  to  a  fine  line,  and  thp.t  you  could 
curve  it  around  your  wrist.  Von  Beust,  the  Chancellor 
of  Austria,  has  ordered  secrecy  in  Hungary  in  regard 
to  a  recently  discovered  process  by  which  glass  can  be 
used  exactly  like  wool,  and  manufactured  into  cloth. 

These  are  a  few  records.  When  you  go  to  Rome, 
they  will  show  you  a  bit  of  glass  like  the  solid  rim  of 
this  tumbler,  —  a  transparent  glass,  a  solid  thing,  which 
they  lift  up  so  as  to  show  you  that  there  is  nothing 
\  concealed;  but  in  the  centre  of  the  glass  is  a  drop  of 
.  colored  glass,  perhaps  as  large  as  a  pea,  mottled  like  a 
duck,  finely  mottled  with  the  shifting  colored  hues  of 
the  neck,  and  which  even  a  miniature  pencil  could  not 
do  more  perfectly.  It  is  manifest  that  this  drop  of 
liquid  glass  must  have  been  poured,  because  there  is 
no  joint.  This  must  have  been  done  by  a  greater  heat 


14  THE  LOST   ARTS. 

than  the  annealing  process,  because  that  process  shows 
breaks. 

The  imitation  of  gems  has  deceived  not  only  the  lay 
people,  but  the  connoisseurs.  Some  of  these  imitations 
in  later  years  have  been  discovered.  The  celebrated 
vase  of  the  Genoa  Cathedral  was  considered  a  solid 
emerald.  The  Roman-Catholic  legend  of  it  was,  that  it 
was  one  of  the  treasures  that  the  Queen  of  Sheba  gave 
to  Solomon,  and  that  it  was  the  identical  cup  out  of 
which  the  Saviour  drank  at  the  Last  Supper.  Columbus 
must  have  admired  it.  It  was  venerable  in  his  day ; 
it  was  death  for  anybody  to  touch  it  but  a  Catholic 
priest.  And  when  Napoleon  besieged  Genoa,  —  I  mean 
.the  great  Napoleon,  not  the  present  little  fellow,  —  it 
was  offered  by  the  Jews  to  loan  the  Senate  three  mil- 
lion dollars  on  that  single  article  as  security.  Napo- 
leon took  it,  and  carried  it  to  France,  and  gave  it  to 
the  Institute.  Somewhat  reluctantly  the  scholars  said, 
"  It  is  not  a  stone  :  we  hardly  know  what  it  is." 

Cicero  said  that  he  had  seen  the  entire  Iliad,  which 
is  a  poem  as  large  as  the  New  Testament,  written  on 
a  skin  so  that  it  could  be  rolled  up  in  the  compass  of  a 
nut-shell.  Now,  this  is  imperceptible  to  the  ordinary 
eye.  You  have  seen  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
in  the  compass  of  a  quarter  of  a  dollar,  written  with 
glasses.  I  have  to-day  a  paper  at  home,  as  long  as  half 
my  hand,  o»  which  was  photographed  the  Whole  con- 
tents of  a  London  newspaper.  It  was  put  under  a 
dove's  wing,  and  sent  into  Paris,  where  they  enlarged 
it,  and  read  the  news.  This  copy  of  the  Iliad  must 
have  been  made  by  some  such  process. 

In  the  Roman  theatre,  —  the  Coliseum,  which  could 
seat  a  hundred  thousand  people,  —  the  emperor's  box, 
raised  to  the  highest  tier,  bore  about  the  same  propor- 
tion to  the  space  as  this  stand  does  to  this  hall;  and  to 


THE  LOST  ARTS.  15 

look  down  to  the  centre  of  a  six-acre  lot,  was  to  look 
a  considerable  distance.  ("  Considerable,"  by  the  way, 
is  not  a  Yankee  word.  Lord  Chesterfield  uses  it  in 
his  letters  to  his  son,  so  it  has  a  good  English  origin.) 
Pliny  says  that  Nero  the  tyrant  had  a  ring  with  a  gem 
in  it,  which  he  looked  through,  and  watched  the  sword- 
play  of  the  gladiators,  —  men  who  killed  each  other  to 
amuse  the  people,  —  more  clearly  than  with  the  naked 
eye.  So  Nero  had  an  opera-glass. 

So  Mauritius  the  Sicilian  stood  on  the  promontory 
of  his  island,  and  could  sweep  over  the  entire  sea  to 
the  coast  of  Africa  with  his  nauscopite,  which  is  a  word 
derived  from  two  Greek  words,  meaning  "to  see  a  ship." 
Evidently  Mauritius,  who  was  a  pirate,  had  a  marine 
telescope. 

You  may  visit  Dr.  Abbot's  museum,  where  you  will 
see  the  ring  of  Cheops.  Bunsen  puts  him  five  hundred 
years  before  Christ.  The  signet  of  the  ring  is  about  the 
size  of  a  quarter  of  a  dollar,  and  the  engraving  is  invisi- 
ble without  the  aid  of  glasses.  No  man  was  ever  shown 
into  the  cabinets  of  gems  in  Italy  without  being  fur- 
nished with  a  microscope  to  look  at  them.  It  would  be 
idle  for  him  to  look  at  them  without  one.  He  couldn't 
appreciate  the  delicate  lines  and  the  expression  of  the 
faces.  If  you  go  to  Parma,  they  will  show  you  a  gem 
once  worn  on  the  finger  of  Michael  Angelo,  of  which 
the  engraving  is  two  thousand  years  old,  onAvhich  there 
are  the  figures  of  seven  women.  You  must  have  the 
aid  of  a  glass  in  order  to  distinguish  the  forms  at  all. 
I  have  a  friend  who  has  a  ring,  perhaps  three-quarters 
of  an  inch  in  diameter,  and  on  it  is  the  naked  figure  of 
the  god  Hercules.  By  the  aid  of  glasses,  you  can  dis- 
tinguish the  interlacing  muscles,  and  count  every  sepa- 
rate hair  on  the  eyebrows.  Layard  says  he  would  be 
unable  to  read  the  engravings  on  Nineveh  without  strong 


16  THE  LOST  ARTS. 

spectacles,  they  are  so  extremely  small.  Rawlinson 
brought  home  a  stone  about  twenty  inches  long  and 
ten  wide,  containing  an  entire  treatise  on  mathematics. 
It  would  be  perfectly  illegible  without  glasses.  Now, 
if  we  are  unable  to  read  it  without  the  aid  of  glasses, 
you  may  suppose  the  man  who  engraved  it  had  pretty 
strong  spectacles.  So  the  microscope,  instead  of  dating 
from  our  time,  finds  its  brothers  in  the  books  of  Moses, 
—  and  these  are  infant  brothers. 

So  if  you  take  colors.  Color  is,  we  say,  an  ornament. 
We  dye  our  dresses,  and  ornament  our  furniture.  It  is 
an  ornament  to  gratify  the  eye.  But  the  Egyptians 
impressed  it  into  a  new  service.  For  them,  it  was  a 
method  of  recording  history.  Some  parts  of  their  his- 
tory were  written  ;  but  when  they  wanted  to  elaborate 
history  they  painted  it.  Their  colors  are  immortal,  else 
we  could  not  know  of  it.  We  find  upon  the  stucco  of 
their  walls  their  kings  holding  court,  their  armies  march- 
ing out,  their  craftsmen  in  the  ship-yard,  with  the  ships 
floating  in  the  dock ;  and,  in  fact,  we  trace  all  their  rites 
and  customs  painted  in  undying  colors.  The  French 
who  went  to  Egypt  with  Napoleon  said  that  all  the 
colors  were  perfect  except  the  greenish-white,  which 
is  the  hardest  for  us.  They  had  no  difficulty  with  the 
Tyrian  purple.  The  burned  city  of  Pompeii  was  a  city 
of  stucco.  All  the  houses  are  stucco  outside,  and  it 
is  stained  with  Tyrian  purple,  —  the  royal  color  of 
antiquity. 

But  you  never  can  rely  on  the  name  of  a  color  after 
a  thousand  years.  So  the  Tyrian  purple  is  almost  a 
red,  —  about  the  color  of  these  curtains.  This  is  a  city 
of  all  red.  It  had  been  buried  seventeen  hundred  years ; 
and  if  you  take  a  shovel  now,  and  clear  away  the  ashes, 
this  color  flames  up  upon  you,  a  great  deal  richer  than 
any  thing  we  can  produce.  You  can  go  down  into  the 


THE   LOST   ARTS.  17 

narrow  vault  which  Nero  built  him  as  a  retreat  from 
the  great  heat,  and  you  will  find  the  walls  painted  all 
over  with  fanciful  designs  in  arabesque,  which  have 
been  buried  beneath  the  earth  fifteen  hundred  years ; 
but  when  the  peasants  light  it  up  with  their  torches, 
the  colors  flash  out  before  you  as  fresh  as  they  were 
in  the  days  of  St.  Paul.  Your  fellow-citizen  Mr.  Page 
spent  twelve  years  in  Venice,  studying  Titian's  method 
of  mixing  his  colors,  and  he  thinks  he  has  got  it.  Yet 
come  down  from  Titian,  whose  colors  are  wonderfully 
and  perfectly  fresh,  to  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  and  although 
his  colors  are  not  yet  a  hundred  years  old,  they  are 
fading :  the  colors  on  his  lips  are  dying  out,  and  the 
cheeks  are  losing  their1  tints.  He  did  not  know  how 
to  mix  well.  All  this  mastery  of  color  is  as  yet  un- 
equalled. If  you  should  go  with  that  most  delightful 
of  all  lecturers,  Professor  Tyndall,  he  would  show  you 
in  the  spectrum  the  vanishing  rays  of  violet,  and  prove 
to  you  that  beyond  their  limit  there  are  rays  still  more 
delicate,  and  to  you  invisible,  but  which  he,  by  chemi- 
cal paper,  will  make  visible ;  and  he  will  tell  you  that 
probably,  though  you  see  three  or  four  inches  more 
than  three  hundred  years  ago  your  predecessors  did, 
yet  three  hundred  years  after  our  successors  will  sur- 
pass our  limit.  The  French  have  a  theory  that  there  is 
a  certain  delicate  shade  of  blue  that  Europeans  cannot 
see.  In  one  of  his  lectures  to  his  students,  Ruskin 
opened  his  Catholic  mass-book,  and  said,  "  Gentlemen, 
we  are  the  best  chemists  in  the  world.  No  Englishman 
ever  could  doubt  that.  But  we  cannot  make  such  a 
scarlet  as  that ;  and  even  if  we  could,  it  would  not  last 
for  twenty  years.  Yet  this  is  five  hundred  years  old  !  " 
The  Frenchman  says,  "  I  am  the  best  dyer  in  Europe : 
nobody  can  equal  me,  and  nobody  can  surpass  Lyons." 
Yet  in  Cashmere,  where  the  girls  make  shawls  worth 


18  THE   LOST  ARTS. 

thirty  thousand  dollars,  they  will  show  him  three  hun- 
dred distinct  colors,  which  he  not  only  cannot  make, 
but  cannot  even  distinguish.  When  I  was  in  Rome,  if 
a  lady  wished  to  wear  a  half-dozen  colors  at  a  masquer- 
ade, and  have  them  all  in  harmony,  she  would  go  to 
the  Jews ;  for  the  Oriental  eye  is  better  than  even  those 
of  France  or  Italy,  of  which  we  think  so  highly. 

Taking  the  metals,  the  Bible  in  its  first  chapters 
shows  that  man  first  conquered  metals  there  in  Asia ; 
and  on  that  spot  to-day  he  can  work  more  wonders  with 
those  metals  than  we  can. 

One  of  the  surprises  that  the  European  artists  re- 
ceived, when  the  English  plundered  the  summer  palace 
of  the  King  of  China,  was  the  curiously  wrought  metal 
vessels  of  every  kind,  far  exceeding  all  the  boasted  skill 
of  the  workmen  of  Europe. 

Mr.  Colton  of  "  The  Boston  Journal,"  the  first  week 
he  landed  in  Asia,  found  that  his  chronometer  was  out 
of  order,  from  the  steel  of  the  works  having  become 
rusted.  "  The  London  Medical  and  Surgical  Journal  " 
advises  surgeons  not  to  venture  to  carry  any  lancets  to 
Calcutta,  —  to  have  them  gilded,  because  English  steel 
could  not  bear  the  atmosphere  of  India.  Yet  the 
Damascus  blades  of  the  Crusades  were  not  gilded,  and 
they  are  as  perfect  as  they  were  eight  centuries  ago. 
There  was  one  at  the  London  Exhibition,  the  point  of 
which  could  be  made  to  touch  the  hilt,  and  which  could 
be  put  into  a  scabbard  like  a  corkscrew,  and  bent  every 
way  without  breaking,  like  an  American  politician. 
Now,  the  wonder  of  this  is,  that  perfect  steel  is  a  marvel 
of  science.  If  a  London  chronometer-maker  wants  the 
best  steel  to  use  in  his  chronometer,  he  does  not  send 
to  Sheffield,  the  centre  of  all  science,  but  to  the  Pun- 
jaub,  the  empire  of  the  seven  rivers,  where  there  is  no 
science  at  all.  The  first  needle  ever  made  in  England 


THE  LOST   ARTS.  19 

was  made  in  the  time  of  Henry  the  Eighth,  and  made 
by  a  negro ;  and  when  he  died,  the  art  died  with  him. 
Some  of  the  first  travellers  in  Africa  stated  that  they 
found  a  tribe  in  the  interior  who  gave  them  better  razors 
than  they  had ;  the  irrepressible  negro  coming  up  in 
science  as  in  politics.  The  best  steel  is  the  greatest 
triumph  of  metallurgy,  and  metallurgy  is  the  glory  of 
chemistry. 

The  poets  have  celebrated  the  perfection  of  the  Ori- 
ental steel ;  and  it  is  recognized  as  the  finest  by  Moore, 
Byron,  Scott,  Southey,  and  many  others.  I  have  even 
heard  a  young  advocate  of  the  lost  arts  find  an  argu- 
ment in  Byron's  "  Sennacherib,"  from  the  fact  that  the 
mail  of  the  warriors  in  that  one  short  night  had  rusted 
before  the  trembling  Jews  stole  out  in  the  morning  to 
behold  the  terrible  work  of  the  Lord.  Scott,  in  his 
"  Tales  of  the  Crusaders,"  —  for  Sir  Walter  was  curi- 
ous in  his  love  of  the  lost  arts,  —  describes  a  meeting 
between  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion  and  Saladin.  Saladin 
asks  Richard  to  show  him  the  wonderful  strength  for 
which  he  is  famous,  and  the  Norman  monarch  responds 
by  severing  a  bar  of  iron  which  lies  on  the  floor  of  his 
tent.  Saladin  says,  "  I  cannot  do  that ;  "  but  he  takes 
an  eider-down  pillow  from  the  sofa,  and,  drawing  his 
keen  blade  across  it,  it  falls  in  two  pieces.  Richard 
says,  " This  is  the  black  art ;  it  is  magic ;  it  is  the  devil: 
you  cannot  cut  that  which  has  no  resistance  ; "  and 
Saladin,  to  show  him  that  such  is  not  the  case,  takes  a 
scarf  from  his  shoulders,  which  is  so  light  that  it  almost 
floats  in  the  air,  and,  tossing  it  up,  severs  it  before  it 
can  descend.  George  Thompson  told  me  he  saw  a  man 
in  Calcutta  throw  a  handful  of  floss-silk  into  the  air, 
and  a  Hindoo  sever  it  into  pieces  with  his  sabre.  We 
can  produce  nothing  like  this. 

Taking  their  employment  of  the  mechanical  forces, 


20  THE  LOST  AKTS. 

and  their  movement  of  large  masses  from  the  earth,  we  - 
know  that  the  Egyptians  had  the  five,  seven,  or  three 
mechanical  powers ;  but  we  cannot  account  for  the  mul- 
tiplication and  increase  necessary  to  perform  the  won- 
ders they  accomplished. 

In  Boston,  lately,  we  have  moved  the  Pelham  Hotel, 
weighing  fifty  thousand  tons,  fourteen  feet,  and  are 
very  proud  of  it;  and  since  then  we  have  moved  a 
whole  block  of  houses  twenty-three  feet,  and  I  have 
no  doubt  we  will  write  a  book  about  it :  but  there  is 
a  book  telling  how  Domenico  Fontana  of  the  sixteenth 
century  set  up  the  Egyptian  obelisk  at  Rome  on  end, 
in  the  Papacy  of  Sixtus  V.  Wonderful!  Yet  the 
Egyptians  quarried  that  stone,  and  carried  it  a  hundred 
and  fifty  miles,  and  the  Romans  brought  it  seven  hun- 
dred and  fifty  miles,  and  never  said  a  word  about  it. 
Mr.  Batterson  of  Hartford,  walking  with  Brunei,  the 
architect  of  the  Thames  tunnel,  in  Egypt,  asked  him 
what  he  thought  of  the  mechanical  power  of  the  Egyp- 
tians ;  and  he  said,  "  There  is  Pompey's  Pillar :  it  is  a 
hundred  feet  high,  and  the  capital  weighs  two  thou- 
sand pounds.  It  is  something  of  a  feat  to  hang  two 
thousand  pounds  at  that  height  in  the  air,  and  the  few 
men  that  can  do  it  would  better  discuss  Egyptian  me- 
chanics." 

Take  canals.  The  Suez  Canal  absorbs  half  its  re- 
ceipts in  cleaning  out  the  sand  which  fills  it  continually, 
and  it  is  not  yet  known  whether  it  is  a  pecuniary 
success.  The  ancients  built  a  canal  at  right  angles 
to  ours ;  because  they  knew  it  would  not  fill  up  if  built 
in  that  direction,  and  they  knew  such  an  one  as  ours 
would.  There  were  magnificent  canals  in  the  land  of 
the  Jews,  with  perfectly  arranged  gates  and  sluices. 
We  have  only  just  begun  to  understand  ventilation 
properly  for  our  houses;  yet  late  experiments  at  the 


THE  LOST  ARTS.  21 

Pyramids  in  Egypt  show  that  those  Egyptian  tombs 
were  ventilated  in  the  most  perfect  and  scientific 
manner. 

Again:  cement  is  modern,  for  the  ancients  dressed 
and  joined  their  stones  so  closely,  that,  in  buildings 
thousands  of  years  old,  the  thin  blade  of  a  penknife 
cannot  be  forced  between  them.  The  railroad  dates 
back  to  Egypt.  Arago  has  claimed  that  they  had  a 
knowledge  of  steam.  A  painting  has  been  discovered 
of  a  ship  full  of  machinery,  and  a  French  engineer 
said  that  the  arrangement  of  this  machinery  could  only 
be  accounted  for  by  supposing  the  motive  power  to 
have  been  steam.  Bramah  acknowledges  that  he  took 
the  idea  of  his  celebrated  lock  from  an  ancient  Egyp- 
tian pattern.  De  Tocqueville  says  there  was  no  social 
question  that  was  not  discussed  to  rags  in  Egypt. 

"  Well,"  say  you,  "  Franklin  invented  the  lightning- 
rod."  I  have  no  doubt  he  did;  but  years  before  his 
invention,  and  before  muskets  were  invented,  the  old 
soldiers  on  guard  on  the  towers  used  Franklin's  inven- 
tion to  keep  guard  with ;  and  if  a  spark  passed  between , 
them  and  the  spear-head,  they  ran  and  bore  the  warn- 
ing of  the  state  and  condition  of  affairs.  After  that 
you  will  admit  that  Benjamin  Franklin  was  not  the 
only  one  that  knew  of  the  presence  of  electricity,  and 
the  advantages  derived  from  its  use.  Solomon's  Tem- 
ple, you  will  find,  was  situated  on  an  exposed  point  of 
the  hill :  the  temple  was  so  lofty  that  it  was  often  in 
peril,  and  was  guarded  by  a  system  exactly  like  that 
of  Benjamin  Franklin. 

Well,  I  may  tell  you  a  little  of  ancient  manufactures. 
The  Duchess  of  Burgundy  took  a  necklace  from  the     / 
neck  of  a  mummy,  and  wore   it   to   a   ball   given   at  / 
the  Tuileries  ;  and  everybody  said  they  thought  it  was 
the  newest  thing  there.     A  Hindoo  princess  came  into 


22  THE  LOST   ABTS.  ' 

court;  and  her  father,  seeing  her,  said,  "Go  home,  you 
are  not  decently  covered, — go  home;"  and  she  said, 
"  Father,  I  have  seven  suits  on ; "  but  the  suits  were 
of  muslin,  so  thin  that  the  king  could  see  through 
them.  A  Roman  poet  says,  "The  girl  was  in  the 
poetic  dress  of  the  country."  I  fancy  the  French 
would  be  rather  astonished  at  this.  Four  hundred  and 
fifty  years  ago,  the  first  spinning-machine  was  intro- 
duced into  Europe.  I  have  evidence  to  show  that  it 
made  its  appearance  two  thousand  years  before. 

Well,  I  tell  you  this  fact  to  show  that  perhaps  we 
don't  invent  just  every  thing.  Why  did  I  think  to 
grope  in  the  ashes  for  this?  Because  all  Egypt  knew 
the  secret,  which  was  not  the  knowledge  of  the  pro- 
fessor, the  king,  and  the  priest.  Their  knowledge  won 
an  historic  privilege  which  separated  them  from  and 
brought  down  the  masses ;  and  this  chain  was  broken 
when  Cambyses  came  down  from  Persia,  and  by  his 
genius  and  intellect  opened  the  gates  of  knowledge, 
thundering  across  Egypt,  drawing  out  civilization  from 
royalty  and  priesthood. 

Such  was  the  system  which  was  established  in  Egypt 
of  old.  It  was  four  thousand  years  before  humanity 
took  that  subject  to  a  proper  consideration ;  and,  when 
this  consideration  was  made,  civilization  changed  her 
character.  Learning  no  longer  hid  in  a  convent,  or 
slumbered  in  the  palace.  No  !  she  came  out,  joining 
hands  with  the  people,  ministering  and  dealing  with 
them. 

We  have  not  an  astrology  in  the  stars,  serving  only 
the  kings  and  priests :  we  have  an  astrology  serving 
all  those  around  us.  We  have  not  a  chemistry  hidden 
in  underground  cells,  striving  for  wealth,  striving  to 
change  every  thing  into  gold.  No :  we  have  a  chem- 
istry laboring  with  the  farmer,  and  digging  gold  out  of 


THE  LOST  ARTS.  23 

the  earth  with  the  miner.  Ah !  this  is  the  nineteenth 
century ;  and,  of  the  hundreds  of. things  WP  ^n^w,  T 
can_show  you  ninety-nine  of  them  which  have  been 
anticipated.  It  is  the  liberty  of  intellect,  and  a  diffu- 
sion of  knowledge,  that  has  caused  this  anticipation. 

When  Gibbon  finished  his  History  of  Rome,  he  said, 
"  The  hand  will  never  go  back  upon  the  dial  of  time, 
when  every  thing  was  hidden  in  fear  in  the  dark 
ages."  He  made  that  boast  as  he  stood  at  night  in 
the  ruins  of  the  Corsani  Palace,  looking  out  upon  the 
places  where  the  monks  were  chanting.  That  vision 
disappeared,  and  there  arose  in  its  stead  the  Temple  of 
Jupiter.  Could  he  look  back  upon  the  past,  he  would 
see  nations  that  went  up  in  their  strength,  and  down 
to  graves  with  fire  in  one  hand,  and  iron  in  the  other 
hand,  before  Rome  was  peopled,  which,  in  their  strength, 
were  crushed  in  subduing  civilization.  But  it  is  a  very 
different  principle  .that  governs  this  land;  it  is  one 
which  should  govern  every  land ;  it  is  one  which  this 
nation  needs' to  practise  this  day.  It  is  the  human 
property:  it  is  the  divine  will  that  any  man  has  the 
right  to  know  any  thing  which  he  knows  will  be  ser- 
viceable to  himself  and  to  his  fellow-man,  and  that  will 
make  art  immortal  if  God  means  that  it  shall  last. 


91723 


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